In various substrate processing equipments, various conveyance systems and substrates are conveyed in physical contact with each other. During this procedure, when the substrates or conveyance systems have foreign matters attached thereto, the subsequent substrates are sequentially contaminated. This makes it necessary that the operation of the equipment be regularly suspended for cleaning, causing the drop of operating efficiency or requiring much labor.
In order to solve these problems, a method which comprises conveying a substrate having a tacky material fixed thereto to remove foreign matters attached to the interior of the substrate processing equipment through cleaning (Patent Reference 1) and a method which comprises conveying a tabular member to remove foreign matters attached to the back surface of a substrate (Patent Reference 2) have been proposed. These methods eliminate the necessity of suspending the operation of the substrate processing equipment for cleaning, causing no drop of operating efficiency or requiring no much labor. In particular, the former method is superior in the capacity of removing foreign matters.
[Patent Reference 1]
JP-A-10-154686 (pp. 2-4)
[Patent Reference 2]
JP-A-11-87458 (pp. 2-3)